♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la >>> what do you need to knowaters. the first time i came here, it was like it was a transformative experience. it was powerful and violent experience. it was as if it was just like taking acid for the first time. meaning what do i do now? i see the whole world in a different way. i often compare the experience, going to tokyo the first time, to what eric clapton and pete townsend must have gone through, the reigning guitar gods of england, what they must have gone through the week that jimi hendrix came to town. you hear about it, you go see it. a whole window opens up into a whole new thing. and you think what does this mean? what do i have left to say? what do i do now? welcome to tokyo. you are not invited. this is the other tokyo. 12-hour flight and i'm baked. no sleep. might as well -- must -- go out. the district near my hotel has the advantage of being where the subterranean life, the repressed japanese male and some female, too, comes out to play. joining me is japanese film producer and production manage

♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ >>> in july 2013, when i wentd nelson mandela was critically ill. in the country he freed from white minority rule was already in mourning. and already fearful of what the future might be without him. >> i pray that he -- somebody takes baton from him. >> i wish him a speedy recovery. and come back to his people. ♪ >> so a good friend of mine, a really great travel writer, said something. the more i travel the less i know. i feel that particularly strongly in south africa, a place i came in a state of near total ignorance. loaded with preconceptions. for the first part of my life, the south africa i knew was not a happy place or a good place. it was a pariah state. outrageously divided into black and white. a throwback to attitudes we thought we'd long learned to reject. ♪ >> the nationalist government in south africa enacted apartheid laws in 1938. who you could marry. where you lived. where you could walk, be educated, everything decided by racist laws backed by police, army and secret services. the institutiona

♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la >>> it's where nearly everything from. the things the whole world wanted made here. the heart, the soul, the beat of an industrial, cultural superpower. a magnet for everyone with a dream of a better future, from eastern europe to the deep south. american dream, you came here. the one straight ahead with the green roof? >> the big building, completely empty. >> empty? unbelievable. >> the white one is being rehabbed. there's some money coming in. the one next to it on the right is completely empty. the gray pyramid with the spire on top sold for $5 million. >> $5 million for that? you can't buy a garage in the hamptons for that basically. >> $5 million for a skyscraper. >> it's post-apocalyptic. it's like a science fiction film. what the hell happened here? >> well, it is post-apocalyptic except for the fact that there's several hundred thousand people living here. >> detroit 2013. charlie la duff is a writer, journalist, television reporter. he grew up here. >> but it used to be two million people. that was rubber.

♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la >> it's one of the most beautifulhose roots are very much the roots of the town where i live, but somehow i've never been able to get it right. to tell the story, any story of sicily. it's the biggest island in the head -- mediterranean. two main towns of palermo and catania on opposite sides. i'm done a show in palermo before. it was an epic goat rodeo, an failure of humiliating scale. this time i was going to get it right. there's the sicily we know from films, an evocative, deeply felt history that's not quite reality but cool anyway, right? there's the simple fact of its location, tucked away under the boot of italy, part of but not really part of that country. its own language, culture, its own history of norman, arab, spanish, roman, turkish, egyptian interlopers, all leaving their mark and their influence. i grew up in new jersey which was pretty much sicily on the hudson. the italian-americans next door weren't from milan, i could tell you that much. i guess what i'm telling you is i figured this will be easy.

la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ >> i was raised without religion.long ago, catholic -- i think. the other side, jewish. i've never been in a synagogue. i don't believe in a higher power. but that doesn't make me any less jewish, i don't think. these guys sandbagging me at the wailing wall, they don't seem to think so either. >> only half. >> jewish? >> yes. you jewish. not the first time. see. >> you writer? >> i'm a writer, yes. [ speaking hebrew ] now you bar mitzvah. >> mazel tov. >> mazel tov. thank you, gentlemen. >> i've never felt so much like i'm masquerading like something i'm not. i am instinctively hostile to any kind of devotion. certainty is any enemy. i'm all about doubt, questioning ones self and the nature of reality. when they grabbed hold of me and in a totally nonjudgmental way essentially -- god's happy to have you, here you go. oh, man. my treachery is complete. just because i was raised outside the faith with no particular attachment or loyalty to israel doesn't mean that plenty of people on this earth don't hate me in principl

-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la-la ♪ >>> it's amazing arriving here after all you see onis, in fact, functioning at all. but it is. the fountains across from the kornish are operating. traffic works, kind of. at the radisson, club sandwiches arrive on time in the lobby. the occasional flash of camo and a security scanner are the really only discordant notes. >> don't want to take the video -- >> you don't, okay. >> inside the old part of the city, men slaughter a camel, while a girl records it with her ipad. >> okay. he said no. >> kids are setting off fireworks in the medina. >> incoming. >> tomorrow is the prophet mohammad's birthday and people who have not known freedom for nearly 50 years are ready to celebrate. martyrs square is filled with families, kids, teenage skater boys and hotshots on motorcycles. it's wild. and almost giddily happy. young men in the camouflage pants of the militias, most of whom were civilians until last year, do their best to sporadically keep order or just join in the fun. every kid above the age of 5 seems to have been issued a lighter and

♪ ♪ found something here in this beautiful world i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha la la la la shaa la ♪ >> everyone gets everything he wants. i wanted to see the congo. and for my sins the let me. in heart of darkness, joseph conrad writes of his alter ego. "when i was a little chap i had a passion for maps. at that time there were many blank spaces on earth. but there was one yet, the biggest, the most blank that i had a hankering after. this, then, is the congo. the size of all western europe combined, it should be africa's wealthiest nation. the people forget or never even knew that the 20th century's first holocaust happened here when belgian's king leopold managed to bamboozle the world into giving him personal title to the congo. leopold's agents. of whom the mythical kurz was won, slaughtered mutilated much of the population in a quest first for iron and then rubber. when independence finally came, the belgians trashed what the could and left behind a completely unprepared, tribally divided and largely ungovernable land mass filled with stuff that everybody in the world wan

♪ ♪ perhaps something good ♪ in this beautiful world ♪ i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-laa-la ♪ >> i'm in peru with this guy, eric. >> he was looking at this, he went into the tree. >> that's funny. >> chef of the world famous restaurant in new york. to look at where chocolate comes from, particularly our chocolate, the very expensive limited run designer chocolate bar business that eric got me into last year. so that's why we're in peru. before we get all indiana jones, we're spending some time in lima, as we like the capital city just fine. we have both of us, from previous trips, friends here. lima is the cultural hub and culinary capital of a country that has exploded in the last decade with scores of world class chefs, cooks and restaurants. it has long been considered to be one of the best food scenes in all of south america. >> good. >> how far is the house? >> five minutes. >> one of our friends here is chef restaurateur, one of the best most successful chefs in the country. his family is a beloved culinary dynasty in peru and a small fishing village about an hour

shoulder ♪ ♪ i'm looking good in this beautiful world ♪ ♪ i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha la la la laa la la ♪ >>> once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a place, a very special place, a clean, orderly, and nice place. usually i hate clean, orderly, and nice. the air smells fresh and physically fit, statuesque blondes pedal through streets lined by old buildings and canals. i read something disturbing on my way here. apparently denmark is, like, the happiest place on earth. they actually keep stats on this. apparently denmark is far and away number one the happiest, most content place on earth. >> well, the colleges are the same for everybody. >> free? >> free. >> that's un-american. that's socialism, isn't it? >> yes. i mean, here, that's not a bad word. >> okay, they pay, like, 60% of their earnings in taxes. but then they do get things like free health care. 52 weeks maternity leave on full pay. >> when i had my kids two rooms down, that's where the future king had his kids. >> there's no, like, beyonce suite. >> no. we're all there. we're all the same. that makes peop

-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la >>> it's where nearly everything american and great camee world wanted, made here. the heart, the soul, the beat of an industrial cultural super power. a magnet for everyone with a dream of a better future. from eastern europe to the deep south. american dream? you came here. >> the one straight ahead with the green roof? >> the rococo building, completely empty. >> unbelievable. >> the white one is being rehabbed. there's money coming in. the one on the right is completely empty. the great pyramid with the spire on top sold for $5 million. >> $5 million for that? you can't buy a garage in the hamptons for that. >> $5 million for a skyscraper. >> it is post-apocalyptic. i mean, it's like a science fiction film. what the hell happened here? >> well, it is post-apocalyptic. except for the fact there are several hundred thousand people living here. >>> 2 used to be 2 million people. that was rubber. that guy was steel. that guy was a doctor. this was what made america. the road started here. the automobile. frozen peas started here. credit on